


Illogical Revolution

by namio



Series: Cyclical [1]
Category: AR∀GO ロンドン市警特殊犯罪捜査官 | Arago
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Detectives Oz and Hunt, Fashion apprentice Arago, Gen, Historical Inaccuracies, In which the four main boys live in the 1930s, M/M, Mentions of alcoholism, Past Child Abuse, and elevated street urchin Seth, and hunt Patchman, differing names inside, except for the food parts, i actually downloaded like ten old cookbooks for this shit, shitty writing too since i gotta nano, with primarily canon-time SethOz
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-04-30 14:31:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5167358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namio/pseuds/namio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>MORNING POST</b><br/>LONDON, SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1931<br/>_________________________________________</p><p><b>PATCHMAN STRIKES AGAIN, KILLS TWO</b><br/>_________________________________________</p><p>It had been a year since such headlines appeared on the paper, plastering its faded pages every three months. Detectives Osmond Miller and Eugene Hunt are on the case, along with accidental additions of Aubin Arago, a man apprenticed to his fashion designer mother, and the recently adopted street urchin Samson.</p><p>They've been making good progress on the case: all they ought to do was catch Patchman and determine his motives. But of course, that's when it all went wrong.</p><p>But perhaps, there was an element of inevitable destiny to it all.</p><p> </p><p>NANOWRIMO</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. LONDON, JULY 1931

Adrenaline speeding in their bloodstreams, they ran.

The dark of the night was only staved off by the flaccid light of the gas lamps, but that didn’t hinder them from chasing after the wisp of cloth that disappeared down the streets. Aubin, a force of fury, gritted his teeth and ran faster. He and Eugene stuck close behind, ignoring the street gamins staring at them from cobbled stairs.

London was a series of intricate maze of buildings, and Patchman expertly wove his way through them. Aubin caught only glimpses of his form running down an alley and followed suit. But the narrow lane soon ran out, and he stopped, facing a wall, silent. His vision fizzled on the edges from exertion as he heaved, hands on knees, but he pushed himself upwards when he heard two other pairs of footsteps echo in the tiny space.

“Did he--?” Eugene’s voice was high from lack of breath. Aubin, still facing the wall, nodded.

“We went to the wrong street, then,” Osmond said, less put out than his partner. He walked closer to Aubin, hands rolling up his coat, baring his forearms. Though there were no lights deep inside, Aubin could still see the way he eyed the tall wall in front of them. It was two and a half stories high, possibly due to an attic, and though the bricks were damaged with time, the chipped holes were too shallow for footholds. Still, his hand reached out to trace them, rough fingers probing the jagged ends of the broken bricks.

“You went to the right one.” Three heads snapped towards the entrance of the dead end, surprised at the boyish voice. “He jumped into the rooftops. It couldn’t have been anything but Patchman, since this wasn’t the first time he’d done this.”

Aubin stepped forward. “Listen, kid, this isn’t something to joke about—“

The boy, too, stepped forward. “I’ve seen him when he took the other street rats to kill them. He did the same exact thing. It wasn’t something I’d believe if I hadn’t seen it with both my eyes.”

Osmond raised his arms, nodding at Aubin to back down. The man only flashed him angry eyes before stepping back, while Eugene walked closer to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Aubin shrugged it off, but the tenseness lining his shoulders faded into a ready slump. His partners calmed down, Osmond turned to the gamin. “Can you tell us anything about what you saw?”

The clouds pass by the moon, and Osmond could see the gamin smirk. “It depends. What can you offer in return?”

 

* * *

 

 

Living in the city, Osmond was lucky to have been given a house. Well, to be exact, it was something his family owned—a government property from over a century ago, he’d been given access to a small house in the heart of London, a thirty minutes’ walk from the Metropolitan Police. It had three bedrooms and a boxroom, a remnant of an older design, and at times Eugene or Aubin would sleep in those guest rooms. His siblings, too, at times stopped by, but those days were usually biannual at most. So, more often, it was his detective partner who slept there after a discussion of a case continued into the early morn.

Eugene Hunt was a determined young man living with his only living parent: his father, who was succumbing into alcoholism after the death of his wife years prior. He was an adequate cook, a good son, and a great detective. A rising star in the police force, he had been a true asset when his partner, a lanky, pale man, was shot on the leg and retired. And that was when Osmond was assigned to be his partner, after suffering three months of being delegated to desk job after his own partner died in an accident while visiting his uncle in the countryside.

They clicked off well. Both of them, in Aubin’s words, were ‘insufferable, with bad sense of humour’, and it only prompted them to share hilarious puns that caused everyone to clear the vicinity. Still, despite his complaints, Aubin himself never left, and so they took it as it was.

Aubin Arago himself was not someone Osmond expected when he accepted the task to pursue Patchman as a detective. A son of a wealthy, widowed French woman, he grew up with couture and high class sophistication. Still, despite that, he was rough on the edges, preferring to spit out words instead of saying them, rolled up sleeves baring built forearms tense with coiled fists and a scowl to match. And the first time they met, it was in a murder scene, where Eugene had to stop him from starting a fight with a policeman for allowing such a gruesome thing happen in front of his mother’s boutique.

He tailed them for a few months, an angry spit-fire son of a French. But then he and Eugene became inseparable, sharing fire and sharing self-assured smirks, and soon Osmond found himself accepting a third, unofficial addition to their partnership. Aubin was his mother’s apprentice, in practice, but he spent just as much time stalking the streets as he did holding out fabrics to cut with precise linings.

But now, they have this.

The gamin who boldly proclaimed he had information sat in the small kitchen, munching on a jam sandwich. There was a hot mug of tea sitting in front of him, too, along with another slice of bread slathered with marmalade, and Osmond at least had the intellect to serve food to the other ravenous men in his home. Aubin and Eugene sat on the couch in the living room, the former eating toast with butter while the latter ate his with a thick layer of raspberry preserve, handpicked by his siblings up north. Osmond himself ate his with marmalade, swallowed down with hearty swigs of builder’s tea.

“All right, I fed you. Now, what do you know?”

Turning to him, the gamin’s eyes changed into something serious. “Patchman had always been able to jump very far, very fast. And I’m not talking about using strange devices to do so—he did it with his own legs, and nothing else. And another thing that might not be common knowledge is that after he cuts off his victims, he used their limbs.”

“That’s just bullshit parents use to scare their children,” Aubin interjected, but Samson shrugged.

“I don’t have parents. Who’s going to scare me to bed?” He took a bite of his sandwich before continuing on. “If you don’t believe me, you can check the sewers by Pudding lane. If you find the other bodies then you’re welcome.”

And of course, despite the sceptical look he shared with Eugene, they did find it.

The stench of the sewers was never pleasant, as it obviously would, but the stench of decaying bodies was innumerably more revolting than anything, and Osmond shook his head as he backed off from the mountains of discarded corpses. Eugene, who was behind him, threw up. Aubin’s pale complexion turned sheet white at the sight.

Near a shop on Pudding lane, Samson leaned against the wall.

There was a crowd surrounding the manhole as they got out, dizzy with disgust, but Osmond made his way to the shop as the crowd parted. He had only spent a minute down there, but the stench clung like lingering ghosts of the deceased, unwilling to part from his clothes. Still, Samson didn’t do more than scrunch up his nose as Osmond stood in front of him, firm and almost stern.

“How did you find that?”

“I, unlike you, know to be discreet in investigations,” Samson said, pulling up the slipping waistband of his too-big trousers. “I followed him as silently as possible. It’s a lot easier when you’re a gamin who has no home. And after so long, I figured out that there had to be a reason why he cut off all those body parts and yet was never found. Then one night, I managed to glimpse at his skin, and realised that it was all sewn together. Patchman had always been a moniker, but I suppose there was a grain of truth in it.”

Osmond’s eyes shone with an unreadable emotion then. Samson, still coy, smirked.

“Be part of us. I’ll allow you to live in my house and I’ll feed and clothe you, but you have to help us with this investigation.”

Samson’s eyes widened, and Osmond could hear Eugene and Aubin gasp behind him. With the crowds nearby, nobody heard their little talk, and it was in this bubble that a lasting, driven quartet was formed, destined to rush straight into their doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I succumbed to the garbage.  
> Reincarnation AU was something I've been wanting to write, draw, and think about for quite a while. It's a lot of lowkey angst and it's a lot of sweet moments, but there's just something to it I can't touch. But I'mma try here.


	2. LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1931

It had been two months since Samson became Osmond’s protégé of sorts, living and helping him. He’d been a quiet little boy after the event, perhaps shocked and humbled, to a degree, but whatever shell he withdrew in disappeared once Osmond promised to teach him things only the privileged was able to do. How to read, for example, as well as how to write—the boy was practically beaming as Osmond brought down the easiest book he had in his collection, sitting him down on the small dining table for a night’s lesson.

He was a fast learner. After introducing him to the neighbours as a long lost cousin from a recently deceased aunt, Samson preferred to spend time out of the public eyes. He took up house chores out of boredom, dusting and stacking scattered books into a pile on the dining table, and then he’d sleep until he woke up again, a renewed sense of annoyance settling on his face. The first day, he’d taken to watering the overgrown garden outside, bored fingers pulling out persistent weeds to the roots. Osmond came home early that day and took him inside, fed him, and proceeded to teach him the alphabets.

The next day, the boy proclaimed that he already memorised all of them and that he had taken to sounding out the words from a book. When Osmond asked which book, it was an old copy of _Critique of Pure Reason_. It was, all in all, an exceptional first book to read, and his tastes only seemed to grow more serious as the days passed.

Two months later, Samson had finished his third book by Immanuel Kant and had moved on to reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Aristotles—Osmond could only shake his head as he came home to an increasingly determined, eloquent boy, ready to take on the world.

“Can you please be a dear and hand me the chicken I bought? It’s on the living room table.” Osmond moved to stir the slowly boiling corn soup on the other stovetop, stirring it as he kept a careful eye on the cooking brown rice. He never liked cooking rice—it took a lot of attention for something that was meant to be eaten with other things. At least potatoes could be eaten with nice, melted butter by itself. He still had to cook the chicken to go with it, and though he was in no rush, his stomach was setting the deadline.

“Only if you stop calling me that,” Samson drawled out, but he still grabbed the entire paper bag and brought it to the kitchen. “What did you buy, anyway?”

Osmond sipped the soup from the ladle, and deemed it satisfactory. “Chicken, some eggs, and lettuce. Some carrots, too, I believe. What do you think of chicken with breadcrumbs and coleslaw tomorrow?”

Samson stared at him cooking for several minutes before shrugging. “Whatever you feel like cooking. I eat anything.”

Considering that they needed to buy clothes for him twice in the past two months, Osmond believed him. Not that he hated the fact that a thin, gangly gamin like him was gaining weight—despite all logical reason, Osmond grew fond of him, and was rather  happy that he was becoming a bit more _alive_ —but it was suffice to say that Osmond didn’t expect a boy to grow so rapidly. But then again, it had been a awhile since he watched anyone grow up. It had been years since he saw his younger siblings, still plump with childish fat and alit with young fire. Samson felt like a brother and not—he ignited a part of Osmond who needed to, for lack of better word, mother someone, and yet was adult enough in words that Osmond found him to be more like a peer. Still, he was a good deal shorter than him, but that difference was steadily thinning down these days, as Samson hit his sprout and grew until he reached Osmond’s shoulders.

“I’ve been thinking about something, though,” Samson then said, sitting on a chair he’d dragged into the small kitchen. “About Patchman.”

Osmond made a face. “Just _thinking_ about him ruined my appetite. Do go on, though.”

“I was reading some books on medicine and amputation just earlier today, and I now have a question: how could one reattach a body part—which is _not_ theirs and might not even fit—and have it work like normal?”

The frown on Osmond’s face grew deeper. He had known early on that Samson had zero understanding of social propriety and how talking about open surgeries while eating breakfast was generally frowned upon, but had entertained the boy, since the rambling had been related to the case. But it seemed like such things was hard to build a resistance to, because the thought of Patchman sewing an arm to his own body was an unwelcome one.

“How about we talk about that _after_ I finish cooking and after we eat?” The rice was cooking nicely and his soup was done, and now all he had to do was to make the chicken. The rhythmic clacks of knife on counter filled the silence, and so did the high creak of wooden chair scraping against the floor and the sound of a thick book thumping onto a table. Osmond whistled to fill the air, mindless tune light and heady in the lit room.

They ate in silence. Samson’s eyes were far off as he chewed, gaze fixated on the window behind him. Osmond himself sipped his comforting tea as he took in bites, letting the thickened, heavy taste of sugar linger on his tongue. It helped wash away the taste of copper in his mouth during bad days, and it kept his insides comfortingly warmed during the good ones. Samson, on the other hand, had always found bread with jam and tea to be his comfort food. He always refused to indulge why, but Osmond figured that it never hurt to keep his men fed well.

“All right,” Osmond said as Samson took the plates and placed them on the sink. They would not be washed until the next morning, since Samson rarely would wash the dishes at night, but Osmond didn’t mind it. They were always washed by the time he got back from work. “About your thoughts.”

“Yes,” Samson said, walking back to his seat. His eyes lit up with a shade of determined seriousness as he recounted his hypothesis. “So I was wondering how exactly Patchman was able to sew up the body parts that he took onto himself. It ought to be something impossible, right? After all, the human body is made up of so many complex parts that the idea of reattaching a body part is just _unheard_ of. And yet he managed to do it. What allowed him to?”

“Better medicine knowledge?” Osmond shrugged. “Who knows?”

“You’re missing the point,” Samson said. “It’s not just the method. If he was able to do such a thing, then there must be a reason why he did it. What has been your theory on why Patchman took the limbs of his victims?”

Osmond stopped. “You’re not suggesting that…?”

Samson, a simple smile on his face, nodded. “Something is making Patchman require various body parts. If we can figure this out, then we could figure out the motive of his murders.”

This was not an easy information to digest, and silence fell for a long moment. Samson, however, leaned forwards, fingers steepled in front of him. Osmond leaned back, arms crossed in front of him. His eyes were trained on Samson’s face, gauging him, but the determination and confidence did not fade.

“I did not read your correspondences,” Samson started, voice light with a note of smug mischief, “but I did figure out that you are, in fact, a member of an organisation cobbled together by Queen Elizabeth I, and that you’re assigned to this mystery because of the fact that it’s _not_ a normal murder.”

Osmond let out a slow, long breath. “Tell me what you know, then.”

In two months, from total illiteracy, Samson figured out a secret not even Eugene realised existed in a year. Perhaps he was playing with fire, Osmond mused as the boy rattled out the way he pieced together the puzzle he found in the strange approaches Osmond himself took to the case and the books on the fae folk stacked upon other literatures. It sounds outrageously simple when he spoke of it, as if it was a common knowledge, but both of them knew that it wasn’t. Osmond understood that Samson took it as a sort of challenge to his intellect.

He now understood just what sort of person he took in as part of their investigative team. He just hoped, as Samson yawned mid-sentence along with the clock striking ten, that he hadn’t taken the boy to a mystery that would kill him to solve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also can be summarised as A Picture of Domesticity
> 
> Fun fact: apparently the first successful reattachment surgery was in 1962. It also bothers me that Brionac makes potential different blood types still compatible. That, or the theory is that Patchman has senses not unlike mosquitoes and can smell blood types. Both sound good to me.


	3. LONDON, AUGUST 1931

Though they had been inseparable for a good two months or so, Aubin still had the tendency to play it rough. Eugene was the perfect person to be his companion, though. Despite all the things Aubin had said, he still managed to retain his easy-going smile, going as far as brushing off all ‘ _impérialiste!’_ and ‘ _brigand_ ’ with a casual suck of his caramel candy and a nod. Osmond had no idea how he did it, but he did it nonetheless. Aubin had managed to insult at least three people with one sentence, including an old woman who had just been passing by after buying eggs, and Eugene still managed to laugh about it.

“Are you listening to me, Hunt?”

“My attention is all yours, _Monsieur_ Poppet.”

Aubin grimaced. “Stop that. You’re atrocious.”

Eugene, still munching on the sweet éclair with chocolate filling, grinned. “ _Oui, monsieur.”_

That got him an annoyed groan, but Aubin said nothing afterwards. His eyes were on Eugene’s face as the latter enthusiastically munched on the French pastry, licking his lips every few seconds to wipe off the creamy filling with his tongue.

“I don’t see why _ma maman_ wants to meet you so bad when you’re absolutely insufferable. She made you those things, you know, even though she has absolutely no reason to.”

Eugene said nothing as he finished his food, licking the cream off the tips of his fingers as he sighed in contentedness. “And I’m forever grateful. Those are absolutely amazing. Huge thanks for your mother—send all my love, if you would.”

Aubin crossed his arms. “Tell her yourself.”

Something flashed in his eyes, but it disappeared too fast for Aubin to really understand. That was the thing about Eugene: he always looked and acted so open, as though everyone could figure him out if they put a bit of time and effort into it, but then he always managed to escape scrutiny. Aubin was in no means trying to understand the man—he was strange, eccentric and a tad too nonchalant—but sometimes he wondered if it was his fault or _Eugene’s_.

“Maybe someday,” Eugene said, shrugging. He shoved his hands into his pockets and nodded towards the door, smile subdued though it stretched wide. “That said, I think Oz should be back soon. How about we meet him?”

Osmond had been a busy man ever since he got Samson into his house, leading to him sometimes ditching Eugene during lunch hours to take care of things back home. Eugene took it in stride, though, telling him to take care of things. The entire small mess with suddenly taking in a boy was in the past now, after they shiftily told everyone that Samson had been a long lost cousin whose parents died so suddenly that they lost contact with him. Aubin never thought anyone would believe that, but apparently the three of them were adept liars.

“Where are you even meeting him anyway?” Aubin grumbled as he rolled the wrapping paper for his sandwich into a ball. The delicate parchment paper sounded satisfying in his ears.

“Archbishop’s park.” Eugene was already walking away when Aubin’s mind clicked and he stood up, chasing after him. It was just half a mile’s walk, which was _new_ because they usually had to run around due to poorly planned meetings that often lied an hour’s walk away while they had only forty minutes to get to, but maybe Osmond finally learned his lessons.

In honesty, Osmond always swore that Eugene was good at being on time until Aubin came around.

“And he’s from where? Hackney?”

“Yes, he’s from home. But we have a place to visit near the park, and he might as well.”

Hackney road. That was about an hour away, which wasn’t impressive until Aubin realised that Osmond had gone there and back within the past three hours. And while he was fit and healthy, somehow the thought of rushing a trip both ways like that sounded unpleasant. Osmond almost never took the cab; something about too much of it whenever he went back home or the other—Aubin never really understood what he was saying, primarily because Osmond always had a lapse of accent when he spent weeks in Scotland, and because he had no idea ‘how long it took just to get into the depths of nowhere’ in Scotland.

Eugene was somewhat less conversational as they crossed the Thames and headed for the Lambeth palace. It matched the gloom of the hanging clouds above, threatening to fall on them in a vicious downpour like the thunderstorm from yesterday, and Aubin shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets. It almost felt like every time he found enjoyment in this forsaken city, things reminded him of how much better it was to live in Neuilly-sur-Seine. _Sa maman_ tried to reassure him that they’d be living in the capital of England, so things must be bustling and active, but the weather had always annoyed him.

And it was even worse when the usually decent company become _part_ of the weather, bogging down the atmosphere even more. And though he loathed admitting it, Eugene was usually a great person to be around, especially since he knew of his own temperament.

“If it helps,” Eugene suddenly said, hands deep in his pockets, “I actually would like to meet her. Someday. It’s just hard for me at the moment.”

“Why?”

Eugene tipped his hat forward, hiding his eyes. “It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death in a few days.”

“Oh.” As though slapped, Aubin stopped in his tracks. Eugene looked back, though, and raised an eyebrow. It looked almost flimsy—how often did he fake expressions in his face just to hide what went underneath? Or perhaps, the better question: how could this make the disguise falter?

“Why do you look so shocked? It’s nothing really big; she died back in the Great War. It’s just that I wanted to take some time off after Sunday. That’s mostly why I’m working today.”

Eugene Hunt working on Saturdays was not an uncommon occurrence—if anything, it was the norm. It was primarily why he was such a well-known presence in the Scotland Yard: he was always available, at times even in the darker hours. _Sa maman_ always pitied him for it— _poor boy, he must be missing something terribly if he went so far to work_ —but well.

“Don’t you have days saved up from all those Saturdays you worked, too?”

“I mean, honestly—what else could I do with my time?”

“Visit your father.” Aubin’s voice was flat.

Eugene turned away. “Let’s just go.”

Aubin had never seen him change a conversation that abruptly—that _blatantly_. It made him feel like a terrible person, which he probably was. Eugene stalked off, too rushed to be simply walking to a meeting, and Aubin hesitated. It was clear that Eugene had enough for him for the day.

Sighing, he resigned himself to getting him a _pain au chocolat_ once he came back to work. It was the least—and most—he could do without outright saying _sorry_.

With a great rumble, the clouds descended. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unnecessary Aubin and Eugene interaction the chapter  
> Also in the original doc it's supposed to be partially chronological but I don't want to mess with it when it's already up so I'm going to just. Chronological only in the year. Because that's the important chronology. Yeah.  
> sorry.


	4. LONDON, OCTOBER 1931

Autumn was not a good look on the more barren cityscape. That was Oz’s opinion on the matter, and he stood by it.

They had gone out to get some more clothes for Sam, though this time it was for a winter coat. They had purchased some shirts for him when he first came around, but with the weather so rainy last month, Osmond thought that it was better to get a coat before another rain spell came around. October promised to be mild, at least so far, but the weather had been unpredictable lately.

Sam was a tiny shadow behind him, strangely made smaller by the pale white shade of his shirt. His trousers fit him better these days though, Osmond thought with approval, and it seemed that he gained some height at last. The fabric that used to pool on his ankle had lessened, and the too-long sleeves were falling on the right places on his wrists. He was still small and light, though, especially for a fifteen years old boy.

“I’m surprised that the people are moving on from the things in the sewers so fast,” Sam commented at the bustle of the streets as they walked. Osmond shot him a look from the corner of his eyes, eyebrows raised. “Though I suppose life goes on.”

“They probably just don’t want to think too much about it, lest it drive them insane.” Osmond himself wished that he didn’t have to deal with the constant contemplation of such things every day, but he had duties. Eugene, on the other hand, seemed to have a fixation in the case, blindly relentless in his pursuit of Patchman. Osmond had always worried about that, but he found no good excuse to stop him when the case was best solved as soon as possible.

“Valid point,” Sam said.

“There’s only so much horror the human mind could take until it starts breaking itself down. Have you read H.P. Lovecraft yet?”

“I thought you forbade me from reading those,” Sam said dryly, shoving his hands into his pockets. Osmond paused mid-step to reach back and ruffle the boy’s hair, unaffected by the yelp and subsequent attempts to swat his arm away. “Will you stop that?”

“Not until you stop being a cute brat,” Osmond sing-songed. “And we’re here.”

Hand gentler, Osmond gripped Sam’s shoulder and guided him inside the store. It was dimly lit, with clothes lining the walls, dark and tan shades saturating the selection. Sam seemed even smaller in the blacks and how it seemed to echo in the room, so Osmond pushed him so that he stood in front of him.

“Morning,” Osmond called out. A man, stern and old, came out from the back, emerging from behind a line of coats. “Do you have any top coats for this boy right here?”

There was a moment of silence as the man assessed Sam’s small form. Sam himself was still, though his chin was held high, and Osmond rubbed small circles on his back to loosen the tense muscles. He’d been tempted to take Aubin to this trip, since he was more knowledgeable about what fit and what didn’t, but it was Sam himself who objected, saying that he didn’t want Aubin’s longwinded, angry fashion tips.

He had a point. Aubin sometimes would give their wardrobe choices a critical eye, and Eugene, who could be said to be in a romance with his large top coat, was one of his main victims. The coat he had supposedly fell in all the wrong places, and that failed to flatter his physique, but Eugene shrugged and said that he wasn’t there to impress anyone. Nor did he, he said, want to meet Aubin’s fashion designer mother. Aubin sulked, leaving behind a long string of French expletives.

“A small guy, huh,” the man finally said. “I think I’ve got one.”

And with that, the man approached a rack and pulled out several coats, all varied in colours. He turned to Sam and held them out. “Try them.”

The coats he shoved into Osmond’s hands were khaki, black and dark brown. Sam immediately snatched the black one and pulled it on. At that, he raised an eyebrow. “Already decided, huh?”

“The khaki looks too much like Eugene’s,” Sam clarified as he buttoned up the coat. It fit him quite well, if Osmond was to judge—a bit big, but just enough to give him more bulk instead of poofing him up. The colour was good on him, too, thought it made him look quieter than he actually was. Still, it was rather fetching, and Osmond nodded.

“I wear black top coat, though,” he said. Sam shrugged.

“Better you than Eugene. Aubin is obnoxious towards him; I’d rather not have him badger me the same way he does to Eugene.”

Osmond stilled for a moment. “Valid point.”

Not even Osmond would aggravate Aubin when he was attached to Eugene. Despite their starkly different pasts—and Eugene’s tendency to make light-hearted jabs at Aubin’s French ancestry while gorging himself on French cuisine—they were the best of friends. This, however, included the vitriolic aspects of camaraderie. They liked to compete, to a degree, but for the most part they just acted like boys and elbow each other until one of them sulked off. For Eugene, this meant that he would severely mispronounce various French phrases until Aubin heard one too many badly said _Monsieur_. For Aubin, it just meant that he would attach himself to Eugene and pick on everything he did.

“What about the dark brown, though?”

Sam scrunched up his nose. “I don’t like it too terribly. I still stick to this one.”

Osmond shrugged and paid for the coat, thanking the man as they left. Sam immediately donned the coat. It looked good under the sunlight, too, Osmond noted—it might be rather plain, but it did its job well. Sam subdued his beaming, but the pleased expression still emanated from his form in other ways. He carried himself straighter, and—it was endearing.

It made him think of Emlyn and how he sometimes would act all adult though he was only nine at the time, and Osmond stopped in his tracks. Who was Emlyn? Albion was a huge family and there were thirteen in the large house in Gargunnock and roughly a dozen off in Ireland, with whom he kept correspondences through letters, but there was no Emlyn. Maybe he was mixing things up from all the old Albion books. There _was_ one by him, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure until he saw it himself.

“By the way,” Sam said. “I was thinking about that rich old woman from yesterday.”

“Mrs. Compton?” She had been a recently widowed woman with surprisingly young sons, whose husband was the case Osmond and Eugene were investigating, but she had refused to talk much until Sam, who stuck around outside the manor, ran in and acted like a child. The two had played their parts, then, acting as though Sam was a rather clingy, innocent younger brother, and apparently his game earned her affections.

“She was lying.”

Osmond smiled. “I knew she’d be more lenient with you. Shall we go, then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gratuitous mentions of the weather because I actually googled and saved 10 years' worth of weather reports for london


	5. LONDON, DECEMBER 1931

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ewan's life needs fixing
> 
> After this it'll be a new year

Eugene never took a Christmas break.

He rented a small room in the outskirts of London, where he would take the train to go to work, placid skies or rain, and walk back home in the same way. The place he lived in was small enough to be claustrophobic, but he preferred it to the ruinous space that he called his childhood home. Years ago, his father was a decent man. The last time he saw the man, he was wasting himself away. One foot in, and the man threw an empty bottle of cheap wine at him, missing by an inch. The bottle shattered on the path behind him, drawing the attention of the neighbours, but Eugene simply stood on the doorway as slurred curses assaulted him. It continued on for half an hour before the man tired himself out and fell asleep, a limp body on the couch.

He cooked some dinner, then, cobbled together from bits and bits that weren’t spoiled yet, and placed a glass of water on the coffee table. He then picked up the shards of glass, both outside and inside, and disposed them in the trash. It felt like routine—it had been years since he last had to do it, but he’d done it weekly back then. Then, once done, he’d draw the curtains in the living room close and the ones in the bedrooms open, and leave.

He never waited until his father woke up. He knew all that awaited him was lamentation of his mother’s death, and how much he looked like her. All that would follow was just anger, because Eugene left him, too.

So it was for this reason that Osmond entrusted Sam to him during Christmas.

“Here are the keys,” Osmond said, dropping a collection of it on Eugene’s palm. “Sam has his own set, so you don’t need to worry about him. All you have to do is cook, really; I’ll just be gone for a week, and I’ll be back by January the second.”

Eugene placed a hand on his shoulder. “I know, I know. You told me that thrice, and the same thing happened last year. Well, minus a boy to look after, but I know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him fed. Now go before you get stuck in the snow again—it’s going to be worse up north.”

Osmond gave him a long, lasting look before clasping his shoulder and hurrying off, dragging his suitcase. The train was leaving in an hour and it would take half of that to get there. Flashing one final smile, Osmond left.

Samson stared at him, wide blue eyes curious and assessing.

“Don’t you have someone to come home to for Christmas?” the boy asked, feet swaying as they dangled above the floor. His small form was swallowed by the large, cushy chair he sat in, the one Osmond liked to sit in. Eugene smiled a small smile as he walked in, letting the door close behind him. The door didn’t creak, unlike his father’s home, and Eugene couldn’t help the guilt at the relief settling in his chest.

“Well,” Eugene said. “I do have someone, but I don’t think they will welcome me very much.”

“Why?” Sam asked.

“He probably would just get angry if I come,” he admitted. The fury would be momentary, but that didn’t erase its existence—even if he drank himself into a stupor, even if he drank himself into stupidity, it didn’t change the fact that he was angry. “And sometimes, things hurt regardless of intention.”

Sam’s expression quieted down into an inquisitive one and Eugene wondered if the boy himself remembered what happened to his parents. Homeless boys weren’t a novelty by any means, but life was never easy. Eugene knew how to count his blessings.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Pain tends to disregard its origins.”

Eugene nodded.  At the falling silence, though, he spoke up. “You know, days of not doing investigation are going to be boring. Do you want to play chess?”

Sam tilted his head as Eugene walked deeper into the house, looking for the chessboard he knew was lying around. It wasn’t his game by any means—Eugene liked working with people and the complexity of the situation, putting his thoughts into others’ emotions and what it might cause or start. When he was a child, his mother would get rather frightened at times; he sprouted some theoretical situations based on observations, and sometimes they came true. She feared it was witchcraft. It was simply because he had too few friends and too much time watching his neighbours, whose voices were loud enough to carry off into their living room. It didn’t do much to quell her fears, but she stopped thinking that it was premonition.

Chess, on the other hand, was a lot more clear-cut. Two people influenced the game, and it was a game of outwitting the other. Osmond was better at it than him, but as Eugene knew more about him, beating him became easier. For one: Osmond liked to keep things simple, but he never hesitated to go an extra mile when he started plotting complexities. Eugene liked to make him go off on a series of well-plotted moves only to be struck down by a simple one.

Sam, though, was someone new. They knew each other better than, say, Aubin knew Sam, but that wasn’t saying much, as they met only when Eugene stopped over at Osmond’s. It felt more awkward to impose when there was another person living in the house, though; while Sam was in no way an innocent child whose purity must be retained from the blood and gore of their job, he still slept at nine.

“I’ve always wanted to try that out, but I didn’t know there was a board here,” Sam said, leaving the comfort of his chair to follow Eugene. His chin was lifted up, head tilted, lips pursed, and Eugene smiled as he walked down the hall into the boxroom. It was where Osmond kept a lot of his less sentimental possessions, and he knew that the chessboard was a store-bought, common board he bought one day out of boredom. “Oz plays that?”

“Mhm. He’s quite good at it, but it’s not really our game. He plays it for the mental challenge.”

Sam perked up at that, back straightening. “Show me, then.”

Eugene laughed as he opened the door to the boxroom. A surprisingly neat stack of boxes lined the wall, filled with trinkets. There were little tags attached to each boxes, written in Osmond’s characteristic neat-messy handwriting, and it took him three minutes to find the chessboard. Some of the paint was scraped off from harsh edges of other items, but it was intact, and that was all that mattered. Sam was a quiet shadow behind him, hovering by the doorway.

“I think we could get us some tea before we start,” Eugene said, a smile on his face. “It’s going to be a long afternoon.”


	6. LONDON, FEBRUARY 2013

The weather has been, to put it kindly, indecisive the past weeks. February is not one of his more favoured months in the year, with all its tendency to give cold, unpleasant rain, but Oz arguably hates the uncertainty of the past few days more. It’s harder to make plans that involve ‘ _make eighteen years olds run around an entire village three times’_ when the sky looms like that, as if taking its sweet time deciding what to do out of spite.

“That’s an awfully creative way to look at the weather,” Seth drawls out, a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Benignly malevolent personification of the atmosphere. There’s probably a story in that. Keep going.”

Oz clears his throat and tries out his withering, complaining old man voice. “Do you know how much this weather is aggravating my arthritis?”

Seth claps thrice slowly. “That ages you up about forty years, I reckon. How old are you again this year?”

“Good question.” Oz pauses. “Isn’t it your birthday this month?”

Seth’s birthday is something that his mind has a hard time remembering, especially since he never truly forgot about Sam. The two of them aren’t that similar, but they’re not that different either—Oz supposes the same goes for him and Osmond. He still intimately remembers how Seth and Sam differs—how Sam is more inquisitive, curious, while Seth seems to know all the secrets of the world. But despite all that, he knows that they’re still the same soul. So little details like dates and favourite foods escape him at times. At least the latter is something he could implement into a semi-regular basis—they can’t exactly have his birthday multiple times a year just so Oz could remember.

“Maybe,” Seth says. Oz leans back on his nice, luxurious chair as he pouts, and Seth flicks a balled up piece of post-it at him from his position on the desk.

 _Right. That._ “You should stop sitting on desks,” Oz says. “Makes you look a bit too much like an eye candy secretary.”

Another post-it ball heads for his face, this time lime yellow. Red ink bled through the paper—that one is probably something important. “If my purpose is to be an eye candy secretary, I demand a higher pay. I deserve compensation for the damages to my brain for doing such menial job.”

Oz laughs, rubbing the skin where the sharp, jagged ends of the pellets hit. “But I needed you to crunch the numbers for me, too. You’re like my own personal accountant.”

Seth’s expression was flat, but Oz could see the ends of his lips twitching. He has to give it to him, though—Seth has a convincing unimpressed look; if he isn’t sitting on his desk like some kind of vixen secretary, Oz might even be inclined to believe that he’s truly unimpressed.

“My intellect is wasted here,” Seth sighs, fingers rolling up another loose piece of post-it. He should start checking what the memos on those are. Oz can’t even remember if that one is for the meeting with the Minister of Defence or not. “I graduate with first-class honours and yet my job is just a glorified Microsoft Excel.”

“To be fair,” Oz says, a cheeky smile on his face, “you’re _excel_ lent.”

Seth let out a long, tired sigh. Feeling victorious, Oz grins, and the early morning light streams in, cool and flat. Oz sits up straighter on his chair. “Really though. I’m pretty sure it’s your birthday sometime soon. As in, the first week of the month. I distinctly remember reading a February birthday in one of the files. I’m pretty sure it was you.”

The only reply he gets is a shrug. “What’s a purpose of a birthday, really. I already passed the legal age milestone, which means I can actually say ‘Yes, I am 18 or older’ on sites that require me to be over eighteen.”

“Like?”

“Job sites, pretty much. Most don’t really want to be caught under fire for hiring illegal child workers.” His voice is suspiciously flat, though, and Oz has an inkling as to why. “So it doesn’t really matter when my birthday is.”

The argument kind of reminds him of how it used to be, back when his siblings were alive. The system is pretty much like that—since it was just so hard to get together and celebrate, they’d just celebrate within the month, with any of them that could attend. Birthdays feel impersonal that way, if he’s honest, but it’s something they all grew out of. When the workload is that heavy, not thinking about being unable to come home at a certain date is a weight off their shoulders.

Still, Oz knows that things are different out there. What they lack in sentiments in birthdays, they make up in strong bonds. Lavish birthday parties weren’t how they show how much they cared. But most people don’t spend the majority of their lives being limited to a group. The camaraderie that stemmed from decades of learning about each other is a rarity.

Seth shrugs. “It’s tomorrow.”

Now Oz realises why Seth didn’t mention it until now. It’s far too late to clear his schedule, and even if he can technically ditch the new Albion kids while they run, he still pretty much will be letting them train supervised by others since he has a meeting with his prosthetist. And while it isn’t as serious as, say, a meeting with yet another government official regarding the continual of Albion, his prostheses are delicate, crucial pieces of equipment he needs at least biannual check-ups for if he wants to stay out of the wheelchair. After all the work he’s done to regaining his mobility, losing it again is a real, valid nightmare.

And at night, he still has to oversee the training post-dinner. They’d be done at nine the earliest. That doesn’t leave much time to leisure, and while it’s a more lenient training schedule than what Oz had in his younger years, he’s starting to realise how non-existent his social life was. Or is, if he’s contemplating things like this.

“Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. TS Eliot.”

Oz couldn’t help the snort that comes out. “You wound me. Here I thought the quote was reserved for Arago.”

“It’s the few I use liberally.”

Seth smiles, though, and Oz wonders how he could have thought of his friendship and family ties with the Albion and Seth without realising something: though they never grew up together, though they spent only a few years knowing each other each lives at most, they still have their own sort of camaraderie. It’s one that lurks more silently, but still is just as valid.

“There is an ice cream shop thirty minutes away that sells amazing gelato,” Oz says then, hand fiddling with a pencil on the desk. “As well as garlic ice cream. We are going to try both.”

“Take out the garlic ice cream from that offer, and I might reconsider. Opportunity cost is a thing, you know, and tasting something absolutely revolting doesn’t seem to be quite of an equivalent value.”

They share a smile.

 

* * *

 

Oz doesn’t actually buy two cups of garlic ice cream to go along with their gelato.

No, he buys one, and grabs two spoons. The employee looks at them with raised eyebrows but a smile twitches at the corner of her lips. He doesn’t know if it’s from the fact that he’s ordering the garlic ice cream—a dare, usually, and rarely for its gastronomical aesthetic—or for the way Seth looks at it in abject horror, as though he can’t believe Oz actually bought it.

Their normal gelato themselves are almost boring: Seth got mint and _Cioccolato all’Arancia_ while he took the tiramisu. Large cups, because they need more sugary treats in their lives, and because they deserve it for all their hard work. If he took some spoonful’s from the birthday boy, nobody commented on it.

“This reminds me of an absolutely amazing confectionary shop in Gwynedd. A tiny thing, literally just the size of two rooms, and it has the best candies and chocolates ever. But not only milk chocolates—in fact, the owner absolutely loves to mix dark chocolates. Made the best bar of sea salt chocolate I’ve ever tasted. I kind of wonder if they’re still running; I sure hope so, though.”

“If you hold any degree of affection for Ewan, it’s probably best to never mention it to Arago,” Seth muses. Oz laughs.

“Ewan Hunt: ditched for chocolates again. New headlines.”

Seth snorts and eats another spoonful of his ice cream. “Might be karma for all the time he ditched Aubin for a rendezvous with pain au chocolat.”

Oz nods to the clear memories of those days. It’s not even an exaggeration—he distinctly remembers the days Eugene would simply wander off to get some pastry in some bakery at random intervals, literally walking away from Aubin in the middle of the latter’s sentence. It was more theatrical, of course, because there were very few ways to shut the man up that didn’t involve actual fistfights, but it was an amusing sight. Ewan isn’t anywhere near as jokingly impolite, but Oz honestly doubts that’s the case when he’s around his co-workers. They all seem to think that he’s an endearing dork with a coffee addiction.

“French pastries are more sophisticated than diabetes-inducing candy bars, though.” Seth makes a face at remembrance, regretting still the painful twang in his teeth at the bite he had. “I swear, those things feel unhealthier than cheap instant noodles.”

Oz clicks his tongue. “Instant noodles are worse. Your taste buds and frame of reference are just askew. I hope I won’t be seeing any more of those things in my house, thank you very much. Here in Albion, we strive to have our people _not_ have addiction to such things. It’s horrible for your body _and_ for the image.”

“Food elitist,” Seth says.

“It’s just rationale.”

Sam remembers the salmon loaves and the fricasseed chickens, though Seth doesn’t. He remembers the hearty mugs of tea, the vegetables Osmond made sure to cook in ways that would urge him to eat it. It’s not easy when Sam never really likes it, and it’s not easy now, where he’s neutral about it but simply stopped caring about healthy food choices. Instant noodles are instant, as far as cooking goes. He has to give it to Oz, though: two lifetimes, and the man never stops caring about nutritional values of his daily servings.

“You care too much about your daily nutrition,” Seth settles. Making sure that they all get vegetables in each meal might be less elitism and more motherly tendencies. It seems to gather Ewan’s approval, though—that might be a way how Eugene and Ewan differ: Eugene is an only child in all ways. He’s close to Aubin, but as equals. Even if Aubin and Arago feel like the least changed by this all, honestly, Seth could see how they’ve changed, too. They’re both spit-fire anger, easily riled up, but there’s a certain rough, unbridled fury running under Aubin’s skin. Ewan tempered Arago’s flame in ways Aubin’s mother never managed to.

Oz shrugs. “Someone has to think about it for all of us.”

Some things never changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha Gross SethOz Feelings
> 
> garlic ice cream is partly because i once read about the gilroy garlic festival and it never really left my mind


	7. LONDON, MARCH 2013

“It’s,” Ewan starts, “freezing.”

And it had been. If the paper he’s been reading is any indication, things have been a whole lot colder than usual. Still, Oz beckons him to sit down on the kitchen stools, which he does with begrudging acceptance. Once seated, Oz pours him some tea—mild Jasmine, black—and nods at him to drink it up.

“This one smells nice,” Ewan says before sipping his drink.

It’s one of the teas Eugene like best, and they both know.

The twins, unlike he and Seth, seem to only remember their past lives after the entire Patchman business. It’s an interesting contrast, considering how fervently they pursued him, but he supposes that they don’t have the training that came with being returned to the world again and again. He and Seth have been here so often, he’s starting to lose track. It’s hard to forget all of the lifetimes, of course, but he’s starting to lose the edges of his memories as Ogma.

His soul is, if Seth’s memories are to be trusted, the oldest of all the four of them.

“The year is promising to be too damn cold,” Oz agrees, refilling his own cup. “You should just wear your long sleeves, it’s going to be pretty cold for a while.”

Ewan scrunches up his nose. “Not that I don’t like wearing that, but it makes me feel like I’m at least forty wearing those. I guess it’s just that these days I _feel_ old more than anything.”

Oz snorts. “Forty, really?”

“Might be those elbow patches. I didn’t mind them before, but these days it feels like people are going to mistake me for some ancient paper pusher who accidentally left the safety of the interiors.”

Never mind the fact that _everyone_ knows who Ewan Hunt is, either from the past or the present. From what he hears from Seth, Ewan’s legacy is pretty good for someone who was declared legally dead and came back to life. If anything, everyone seems to love him all the more after coming back. All sounds well. At least, it sounds better than the life he led before, and not in the least because quality of life improved in the past decades.

“Do you want to hitch a ride to work?” Oz asks, taking a bite from his bacon. “I’m pretty sure Seth was a slave driver last night—he had the same look he does when he ordered the Albion kids to chase after yet another prankster fae. I heard that he’s going to force Arago to materialise Brionac into an actual spear-shaped energy.”

“Arago looks dead to the world right now, so I reckon that happened.”

Though he was a bit kinder after Arago remembered Aubin, Seth is still very enthusiastic about making Arago push his limits. It’s something Oz condones, of course—Arago needs to be better with controlling Brionac—but honestly Oz is starting to wonder if there is an element of sadism involved. Perhaps he still needs that passive aggression management course Oz’s psychologist suggested, though it’s not like Oz would dare to voice it. That’s a one way ticket to getting stranded in some alley in the Isle of Man.

“Are you even going out, though?” Ewan asks, sipping his coffee. “What is your schedule even.”

“I’ve got some business down the palace. Something something about adjusting some information that are being released to public.”

Ewan raises an eyebrow. “Again? It’s been three years, you’d think they finally got their things together and settled on what they wanted to disclose to the public and what they don’t. I mean, making people adjust their lives to accommodate the fact that there are faes and various other supernatural beings isn’t easy, but you’d think that they’d already be sure of what they’re doing now.”

Oz laughs and munches on the last of his bacon and egg. Half eaten toasts line the edges of his plates, staring at him unimpressed, and he picks them up to finish them off. “Nothing I can do. I’m paid to do this stuff, can’t go against orders.”

“The pay’s that good, huh.”

This time, the laugh is more a guffaw. “Join us, Ewan, and we’ll spend our days drafting school curriculi and torture children with lessons on how to avoid the common fae. We’ll get a lot of money so we can vacation, at last, in the Bahamas, enjoying the solitary life of being on some privately owned beachside house roughly five kilometres away from any and all civilisation. Join us, you still have the chance. It’ll be good.”

Ewan almost chokes on his coffee, but regains his breaths just to lose it to a laughter fit. That’s what’s nice about Ewan, Oz supposes—it’s a lot easier to joke around someone with his temperament and strange sense of humour. Oz is fairly close to Rio and Coco, and they remind him of younger sisters at times, but Ewan is more like someone he can text stupid things at eleven at night and get an even stupider response. Those moments are reserved for special days, since Oz can’t handle too much of the weird, but it’s always nice to know that some people still enjoy abstract humour.

“Sorry, but based on what I heard on the telly, privately owned beach houses five kilometres away from civilisation is the best place for murderers to go after you. I think I’ll pass—I don’t really like murderers.”

“Our privately owned beach house five kilometres away from civilisation would be so tantalising that the murderers would choose instead to join us. Come on!”

“I don’t know,” Ewan says, “will the murderers kill us then _steal_ our privately owned beach house five kilometres away from civilisation?”

They carry on as they leave for work, adding new adjectives for every few steps they took. By the time they reach the car, with the confused driver and all, the word of the day is ‘our privately owned beach house five kilometres away from civilisation that has a kitchenette in the kitchen with three coffee machines for each floor and a five by five luxury bathroom that also has a coffee machine and the option to add coffee infusion to the bath’. It’s a good day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> absolutely nothing happens


End file.
